Read this story to the end to know. If you find nothing strange, read it again.

Je t’adore

Jala pronounced ‘mon père.’ The interpreter said ‘my father.’
When she pronounced it too fast, her mouth wasn’t serene. French was a kind of language that sounds like Chinese with so many Qs sound effects.

Since I admired Jala, she needed to know me.

“I’m interesting in networking”, I said, “I came from Cape Town to see my aunt.”

In Cape Town in a minor computer village I was known as a Jos boy, a servant of an American White industrialist who took me as his daughter who schooled in Ukraine.

I thought to write a poem about Jala, about her palor’s splendour.

She was outwardly black, inwardly white, a pure Parisian. Since birth, living in Paris for 22 years, she deserved this clean house with beauty typically of whites. Bird singing outside.

I liked her: she looked serious unlike uncivilized women in shanty towns. I would write a poem about her to be read in Cape Town, read in Johanesbourgh.

It was good to be civilized.

This is Cotonou, her country of origin where we dey. Cotonou, West Africa.

“Is Networking your only interest on earth?” She asked.

“Not at all?”

“I think of you, you should learn French and feel free to roam about West Africa.”

“You mustn’t tell me”, I said.

“We don’t need an interpreter to hear us, I swear, to blackmail us.”

“We need it for now please. Not blackmail. I need to trust you, Jala.”

“C’est-à-dire…”

“That is to say…” the man interpreted.

“C’est ça.”

“That is it.”

In a beach with him this love was too slow. Jala wore her bathing suit, plastered on her body, and as I hugged her, my lips salty, the interpreter rushed close to us like a referee on a football pitch.

“I love you”, I said.

“Je t’adore.”

#I wrote this last year.

Ever ''DATED''